Introduction of myself Essays - Chinese Cuisine,

Introduction of myself Yang Wang English 102 Project 1: Personal Research 1/20/2014 Introduction of Myself My name is Yang Wang, and I am from China; additionally, I live in Chinatown of Chicago. This is my third semester in Harold Washington College, and I am taking three other classes this term include Biology 121, Sociology 201, and Math 118 which I need to stud online . In this paper, I will share some information to let others know me; at the same time, it will let me know myself better. I was born in a small city of Sichuan which is located in the southwest part of China. My hometown is famous for delicious, spicy food in China, so I also love Sichuan cuisine very much. After I finished my college study in China, my curiosity drove me to come to America because I wanted to see what the other part of the world looks like. I chose Chicago because my uncle is here. In Chicago, I make a lot of friends, and I am also improving my English. After I finish study at Harold Washington College, I will apply for a program named Dental Hygiene at Kennedy King College because I think it is easier to find a job. Most people said it was really tough, especially for those whose mother language is not English. However, I think I already chose the way where I need to go; I should not be afraid of the difficulties I will meet. Frankly speaking, I am a very independent person because I have my own ideas and opinions for everything which concern myself. For example, when I chose my major in the college, a lot of people suggested I study accounting or finance; however, I still insisted on my own decision to study about health care. In order to make a right decision, I often make a list of the advantages and disadvantages of the result. At the same time, I also list the benefits and challenges of the process. Besides this, I often like to listen to others suggestions, and I will pick out some ideas which are helpful for making the right decision. LinLing, one of my friend, said, I really admire your wisdom and confidence when you are making your important decision. You can analyze the outcome which is good or bad for you. When I saw making the list, I thought you were solving the logical math problems. That is why you always know which side you need to choose." Apart from this, I am also an expressive person. Because I am working a part time job as a server in a Chinese restaurant, I need to explain what ingredients are included and how the chef prepares for them, and what the dish tastes like. Sometimes, I also need to remind my customers some dishes include ingredients, such as sesame seeds, nuts, and some seafood because they may be allergic to these food. Additionally, I also like to introduce traditional Chinese cuisine to Americans if they want to try some typical local area cuisine China. One of my customers, Megan, confirms this idea, Your English is good compare with others in Lao yunnan (my work place). You like to introduce some special awesome dishes which are just right for me. Because of your introduction, I know how delicious Chinese cuisine is. In English 102, I hope I can conduct some projects, such as interview, surveys, and research. Through those projects, I can improve my communicating and writing skills. On the other hand, I am also nervous about my speaking skills. Because I am afraid I cannot express what I want to say with my limited words in English when I talk to others.

Definition of career couples and parent employees The WritePass Journal

Definition of career couples and parent employees Introduction Definition of career couples and parent employees IntroductionConclusionRelated Introduction In modern years there has been an increasing interest in the mixture work and family, or more general, the integration of work and family life. One of the main reasons for this increasing interest is the increased contribution of women in professional employment, a development which has drastically altered traditional family structures and gender roles. Greater access to and involvement in education and enhanced career opportunities for women has led to a more diversified working population and the increase of the dual-worker family. The dual-careercouplesrefers to a specific kind of dual-worker family in which bothmembers follow a professional career and concurrently keep a family life together. In dual-career relationships conventional family roles, specifying role behaviors, are challenged in a basic. In the conventional family representation, the male is regarded as the main ‘breadwinner’ and assures that the family has an adequate sum of financial earnings to live. His breadwinner function, limits his ability to connect in family responsibilities and therefore, the female manages the family, performs every family chores, and takes care of the kids. Regardless of strong historical value, the number of families that fit this conventional mould of the male as only breadwinner and female as the main housekeeper and care-giver is diminishing considerably. Factors for instance equal opportunity legislation, economic inevitability, expansion in white-collar employment and the impact of the female liberation/ the women’s movement have led to a raise in the number of nontraditional (i.e. dual-worker and dual-career) families. These factors, amongst others, hav e caused women to engage in employment in the marketplace and chase professional careers parallel to those pursued by their male counterparts. Dual-career couples are consequently expected to become a more common fact in the near future. Authors like Crompton (1999) pointed out that the question of work-life-balance was comparatively unproblematic until the closing decades of the twentieth century because of two frequently acknowledged assumptions: (a) the standard employee was full-time and almost always a man, and   (b) women were assigned to voluntary labour of caring and family tasks. So, finding the right balance between work and family was relatively easy in this era, due to the domestication of women in addition to their exclusion from professional employment. Conclusion The bigger contribution of women in the labour market since the beginning of the 21st century has considerably changed the demography of the work-force and reshaped conventional family associations, demonstrating a difference from traditional societal norms. So, women’s vigorous contribution in the labour market has placed stresses and tensions upon the conventional household and professional responsibilities.   This dynamic interaction between work and family responsibilities complicates the attainment of a healthy work-life balance which may be vital for the efficient performance of the employee. Companies cannot and should not overlook the larger setting in which the work is performed. Families function as social systems, with an inter-relationship between work and non-work roles, so that tensions in one are inevitably transferred to the other. In addition to that, conflicts and tensions arising from multiple stress have a de motivating effect on employees, this raise the chances of absenteeism and signify a risk to the quality of organisations. Therefore, the innate difficulties of the dual-career life are likely to have significant direct consequences for dual-career employees employing organizations. The significance of proper employer responses to dual-career issues and dual-careers has develop into a central area of interest for human resource management.

E-Business Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

E-Business - Case Study Example Hoffman & Novak (1996:51) described the internet as a "phenomenal marketing opportunity". This same definition was later echoed by Palmer & Griffith (1998:45) when they state that, the internet has created a new revolution in marketing by providing much more than just a new medium through which organization communicate to the public. E-marketing has become an important phenomenal for Business to Business, Consumers to Consumers as well as Business to consumers marketing. As the fight of market shares and quest for product success continue, e-strategy has offered marketers and businesses all the necessary tactics, and methods to give their product a break through, or remain competitive (Frost et al. 2001). This assignment examines and evaluates the supply chain management functions of an ebusiness. Using Wal-Mart as a case study, the paper examines the electronic business platform of the organisation with attention on the supply chain. Supply chain management (SCM) is a tactical and management tool employed by present day business to efficiently integrate suppliers, manufacturers, warehouses, and customers so that a company's merchandise is produced, distributed at the right quantities, locations, and the right time (Cheng, Lai & Gunasekaran 2006). This is to minimize system wide costs while satisfying service-level requirements (Cheng, Lai & Gunasekaran 2006). ... Using Wal-Mart as a case study, the paper examines the electronic business platform of the organisation with attention on the supply chain. 1.1Overview of Supply Chain Management Supply chain management (SCM) is a tactical and management tool employed by present day business to efficiently integrate suppliers, manufacturers, warehouses, and customers so that a company's merchandise is produced, distributed at the right quantities, locations, and the right time (Cheng, Lai & Gunasekaran 2006). This is to minimize system wide costs while satisfying service-level requirements (Cheng, Lai & Gunasekaran 2006). Today, SCM gained momentum and received due attention from practitioners and researchers. It has become present day managerial competitive weapon for improving performance (Ramsay 2000). To minimize wastages and meet up with customers demand. Customers and suppliers are important stakeholders. "Stakeholders are those individual or groups who depend on the organisation to fulfill their own goals and on whom, in turn, the organisation depends" (Johnson et al 2005:179). An organisation SCM set the pace and the platform for this to take place. Wal-mart is the largest grocery retailer in the United States with estimated 20% of the retail grocery and consumable business as well as the largest toy seller in the States having 22% share of the market, and the highest private employer with about 1.9million workers and employees. The company had a net income of US$11.3Billion in 2007. Thus, this study was initiated to investigate the application of supply chain management strategy in Wal-mart in its electronic business platform. Using Porters competitive advantage, Porters value chain framework, and the SWOT analysis, the company was

The write choice Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

The write choice - Assignment Example Amnesty International, an international human rights organisation has also argued that capital punishment is the ultimate denial of for human rights. They argue that since death penalty is the premeditated taking of a human life by a government, it is the ultimate disrespect for human life and therefore should not be allowed. Today, United States, according to Amnesty international has the fourth highest number of executions in the world and together with the first three countries (China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia) make up over 91% of total executions in the world (Gill, para 1). This has raised concerns especially seeing that USA is in the company of the most undemocratic nations in the world such as China and Iran. One of the biggest challenges in justifying death penalty as a way to bring justice to victims of murder and their family is the fact that it is possible to wrongfully convict a person. If a person in convicted of any other crime and imprisoned and later seen to be not guilty, they can always be acquitted. If on the other hand a person is executed and later new evidence shows that he was not guilty, there is no way of bringing back that person to life, which would mean that the government will have committed murder. According to Robertson (221), there is always a chance that a person can change and should therefore be given a second chance by preserving their lives. Robertson, Diane. Tears From Heaven: Voices From Hell: The Pros and Cons of the Death Penalty as Seen Through the Eyes of the Victims of Violent Crime and Death Row Inmates Throughout America. New York NY: iUniverse, 2002.

Economic reports Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Economic reports - Essay Example According to Kroenig (2015), while exploring the subject, argues that in 2021, China will have overtaken the United States as the world’s largest economy. What is more intriguing is the proposition that the military power which is another important factor when it comes to the issue world supremacy, will follow the economic heft. China will therefore be the strongest country both in terms of military and economy. China boasts having the most spoken language on earth. This has been used to create cohesion and encourage economic growth. However, the author uses a different approach to address the subject by focusing on the domestic political institutions. According to Machiavelli, cities expand when everyone stops focusing on the particular good of the activities that are being undertaken. Therefore, the notion that the governments that have representative forms of rule are the ones that can steer fast growth is misguided. The idea of Machiavelli can only be achieved in republic s such as China. The idea of China’s rapid economic growth has also been boosted by the view of social scientists who claim that autocracies do not experience smooth economic runs compared to democracies. On top of that, democracies are in a position to access international capital markets and also form strong and reliable alliances that are key in boosting the economy. Therefore basing the argument on that, it is true to say that China has had a smooth economic growth and considering that other super powers seem to have exploited all their efforts and stagnated, it could be the next super power. Democracies are also known to enjoy a built in advantage when it comes to the struggle for global mastery. On a head to head analysis between China and the already stable economies such as the UK and US, one can note that at the time when the latter enjoyed a smooth economic growth, they were experiencing or were having great democracies. A

Conceptual Art: Responses to Capitalism

Conceptual Art: Responses to Capitalism When Situationism evolved from the Letterist movement, in the middle of the last century, it set itself up in opposition to two other two other politically motivated groups: Dadism and Surreallism. Situationism, however, was only incidentally political, and rather than subverting the art world, aimed only to redesign its context, including the attitudes of the public, so that art could become something anyone could do or enjoy- something integrated into everyday life. Historically, arts efforts to bring down capitalist structures from within have been very ill-fated, with artists finding themselves ignored, scorned, crushed or – perhaps worse- accessories to political agendas. Artists and writers must work harder than ever to devise means of opposing or exposing capitalisms deceptions, but many commentators appear to have reached the conclusion that the battle is barely worth fighting. As we shall see, Jean Baudrillard argues that criticism of the status quo is no longer possi ble through art or literature and that the only efficient way of dissenting from capitalist society is to commit suicide, Modern art wishes to be negative, critical, innovative and a perpetual surpassing, as well as immediately (or almost) assimilated, accepted, integrated, consumed. One must surrender to the evidence: art no longer contests anything. If it ever did. Revolt is isolated, the malediction consumed. Thus the avant-garde movements in Europe put the artist under pressure to exhibit a certain individuality, while also – rather contradictorily- being a producer, and as prolific, political and reactionary a producer as possible, There is a lot of talk, not about reform or forcing the Enlightenment project to live up to its own ideals, but about wholesale negation, revolution, another new sensibility, now self- affirming or self-creating, rather than a universalist or rational self-legitimation. This in turn suggests a tremendously heightened role for the artist, the figure whose imagination supposedly creates or shapes the sensibilities of civilization. In a sense, the avant-garde has been socially commissioned to forecast the future, to scouting out new intellectual terrain, Aesthetic modernity is characterized by attitudes which find a common focus in a changed consciousness of time The avant-garde understands itself as invading unknown territory, exposing itself to the dangers of sudden, shocking encounters, conquering an as yet unoccupied future. The avant-garde must find a direction in a landscape into which no one seems to have yet ventured Early Attempts to Overthrow Capitalism In many ways, Dada and Surrealism represent the most successful artistic rebellions against capitalist norms, as they have attacked the conventional assumption of meaning itself, and in doing so drew attention to the ridiculous fact that such an assumption existed at all, Dada has often been called nihilistic and its declared purpose was indeed to make clear to the public at large that all established values, moral or aesthetic, had been rendered meaningless by the catastrophe of the Great War Dada preached nonsense and anti-art with a vengeance It is as though the Artist jumped before she was pushed. With its effort to close the gap between producer and produced by making everything equally alien, Surrealism also sought to negate its creator, using, pure psychic automatism intended to express the true process of thought free from the exercise of reason and from any aesthetic or moral purpose . Habermas, too, asserts that Surrealism poses a threat to arts existential rights, but still fails in two ways, First, when the containers of an autonomously developed cultural sphere are shattered, the contents get dispersed. Nothing remains from a desublimated meaning or a destructured form; an emancipatory effect does not follow. Habermas draws attention to the levelling affect of contemporary communication networks: networks which challenge the hierarchical assumptions of classical Marxism, and which have, in scale, surpassed what any postmodern commentator – even in the 1980s- could have imagined. More so than ever, our media are democratic and interrelated, A rationalized everyday life, therefore, could hardly be saved from cultural impoverishment through breaking open a single cultural sphere art and so providing access to just one of the specialized knowledge complexes. Any active dissent can be transformed into a commodity, a product to assist the perpetuation of capitalism. Catchy slogans devised by revolutionaries are used to sell mortgages, paintings that challenge conventional assumptions about beauty and form are written about in books to be sold, and bought by galleries where their beauty and form can be admired and valued- bought and sold. As the â€Å"Anti-Naturals† recently wrote, on the subject, â€Å"It is the nature of the Spectacle to transform all experience into a consumer commodity. It is no surprise, then, that so much of modern capitalist production should be focused on the authenticity swindle. It is not merely that we are told that our authentic self is only a credit card order away. We must be told what and how to purchase. Since, in the midst of the Spectacle, all experience is real only when it can be consumed, it is natural to follow the guidance offered by the array of products engineered to address each particular need. In reality, it is quite easy to mass market to hundreds of millions of individuals,‚ since each quest is identical in its basic features.† Any words spoken against can be turned into rallying support. Art, like any powerful weapon, can always be turned against those who use it. Whatever doesnt kill power is killed by it. In this way the Dadaists watched their anti-art works being systematically categorised as works of art, and were forced to focus their whole project completely on the evasion of this recuperation. Five years of agitation against capital, war and morality, brought them to an impasse of suicide or silence. Everything the Dadaists made, said, wrote or performed seemed to be turned against its critical purpose and used against them- and they abandoned the project. Effectively, they went on strike. The Dadaists left a legacy in the form of recuperated, commodified art works, and in multiple imitations of their style and attitude. Their advocation of collage and photomontage is now everywhere in advertisements, their paradoxically anti-art art surely at the very heart of current post-modernist critical theory. They were correct in their belief that this capitalist appropriation was inevitable while they were merely producing, and not controlling the means of production, but in some ways, they did in fact constitute a challenge to bourgeois morality. Dadaism questioned the philosophical assumptions which justified smug bourgeois attitudes, and uncovered the hypocracy of World War 1s brutality legitimising propaganda. In the end they felt that their subversions of established values were merely contributing too much to the culture they had been trying to undermine. The Situationist Asger Jorn was emphatic about the failure of Marxist theory, to liberate of art from commodification , â€Å"Instead of abolishing the private character of property, socialism does nothing but augment them as much as possible, rending humans themselves useless and socially non-existent. The goal of the development of artistic liberation is the liberation of human values by the transformation of human qualities into real values. Here begins the artistic revolution against socialist development, the artistic revolution that is tied to the communist project . . .† Debord and the Situationist Reaction to Capitalism Debords 1967 book The Society of the Spectacle, represented an attempt to articulate as fully as possible the Situationist philosophy. The term spectacle refers to the colonization of everyday life by commodity in late capitalism, an extension of alienation experienced between production and consumption. The spectacles subjective, one-directional effect requires a kind of non-participation, eventually resulting in a breakdown of communication between people. Situationism distinguishes between classical and modern forms of capitalism. Where classical capitalism demanded that wasted time describes any time not spent at work, modern capitalism actually reverses that, using advertising and other spectacular means to declare that it is the time spent at work that is wasted, and work is justifiable only because it provides the monetary ability to consume. Marx wrote that, the worker feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home The Situationists describe the spectacular society as a place where, the spectator feels at home nowhere, for the spectacle is everywhere . As Debord himself explains, So long as the realm of necessity remains a social dream, dreaming will remain a social necessity. The spectacle is the bad dream of modern society in chains, expressing nothing more than its wish for sleep. The spectacle is guardian of that sleep . However, the spectacle was not unique to capitalist society; the Situationists worked on a theory of the concentrated spectacle that would incorporate individual influences on capitalist regimes. This was principally contrived as a rhetorical framework to include the cult of personality in the dictatorships of places such as Cuba, the Soviet Union and China. The Situationists argued that the same tricks that society used to sell fast cars and kitchen appliances were used to promote and deify figures such as Chairman Mao. In anarchic efforts to subvert the spiritual and fiscal poverty of urban life under the tyranny of the spectacle, the Situationists developed a revolutionary art, departed from artistic convention. In their article Preliminaries Toward Defining a Unitary Revolutionary Program, Debord and the Marxist theorist Pierre Canjuers, assert, â€Å"At one pole, art is purely and simply recuperated by capitalism as a means of conditioning the population. At the other pole, capitalism grants art a perpetual privileged concession: that of pure creative activity, an alibi for the alienation of all other activities (which makes it the most expensive and prestigious status symbol). But at the same time, this sphere reserved for free creative activity is the only one in which the question of what we do with life and the question of communication are posed practically and in all their fullness. Here, in art, lies the basis of the antagonisms between partisans and adversaries of the officially dictated reasons for living. The established meaninglessness and separations give rise to the general crisis of traditional artistic means a crisis linked to the experience of alternative ways of living or the demand for such experience. Revolutionary artists are those who call for intervention; and who have themselves intervened in the sp ectacle in order to disrupt or destroy it.† Initially, the work the Situationist International produced was aimed at ridiculing formalist conceptions of the art object: Asger Jorn bought amateur paintings at flea markets and painted over them, subverting notions of authority and value. Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio invented a style of â€Å"industrial† painting where the canvas was over a hundred metres long, then cut strips off for potential buyers, thereby subverting traditional preconceptions of arts autonomy. In reality these processes were eventually absorbed by a capitalist art market bought, sold, exhibited, written about, and for the most part, politically neutered. In his 1974 book Theory of the Avant-Garde, Peter Burger points out that the avant-garde artists main goal is to shock the viewer, typically accustomed to organic or formalist works of art, in the hope that such withdrawal of meaning will direct the readers attention to the fact that the conduct of ones life is questionable and that it is necessary to cha nge it He goes on to state that, Paradoxically, the avant-gardist intention to destroy art as an institution is thus realized in the work of art itself. The intention to revolutionize life by returning art to its praxis turns into a revolutionizing of art. This is the kind of logic that prompted the Situationists to agree to stop producing art in 1961, when they decided to cease considering themselves artists. Any remaining members unwilling to abandon traditional forms of art, including Jorn, Pinot-Gallizio, and Constant found themselves either being forced into ideological resignation or expulsion. â€Å"It is a question not of elaborating the spectacle of refusal, but rather of refusing the spectacle. In order for their elaboration to be artistic and authentic in the new and authentic sense defined by the SI, the elements of the destruction of the spectacle must precisely cease to be works of art. Once and for all. . . . Our position is that of combatants between two worlds one that we dont acknowledge, the other that does not yet exist.† In The Situationist City, Simon Sadler write that, in abandoning early Situationism, the Situationist International abandoned its imagining of utopia a devastating decision, surely unprecedented in the history of the avant-garde, and yet at the same time surely the situationists greatest contribution to that history: the recognition that in changing the world, avant-garde art cannot be a substitute for popular redistribution of power It seemed that the SI recognized that for any avant-garde to succeed, it would do best striving to produce artists, and not art. The Dadaists, too, were aware that both art and artist are part of the capitalist system, and consequently as guilty in their participation as any other commodity or worker. Marcuse and Adorno, in contrast, argued that the Dadaist project was misguided for its attacks on conventional art. They saw art as an autonomous entity, separate from capitalist interests, and something intrinsically apolitical that must be preserved rather than aggressively undermined. For Adorno, art bears an essential negativity derived from its peculiar Form; its rearrangements of reality are conducted according to a system quite alien to those of capitalism. This â€Å"Form† grants art a: refuge and a vantage point from which to denounce the reality established through domination. While Adorno and Marcuse criticised the anti-artists for attacking artistic Form, they agreed with the avant-gardists in their slightly utopic aspiration of abolishing the distinction that existed between art and the rest of reality. In fact, Marcuse wished to see a society organised around the aesthetic principles he believed resided only within art. Both argued that this integration could not be achieved if artists were allowed to participate. Art should be kept apolitical and protected, in a realm conducive to calm reflection that might remind us of the truth an authentic life can afford us after the revolution. So, although they expressed their rejection of this view in different ways, the Dadaists, Surrealists and Situationists all aspired to a collapse of the distinction between art and the rest of life in present: â€Å"everyday life†. Instead of waiting for the revolution, all three argued that the integration of art and life was in fact necessary for the achievement of revolution, a revolution made possible only by a combined cultural, ideological and economic assault on capitalism. Asger Jorn, again, on the failure of the socialist revolution, â€Å"The capitalist revolution was essentially a socialization of consumption. Capitalist industrialization brought humanity a socialization as profound as the socialization proposed by the socialists that of the means of production. The socialist revolution is the fulfillment of the capitalist revolution. The one element removed from the capitalist system is saving, because consumptions richness has already been eliminated by the capitalists themselves†¦ Real communism will be the leap into the domain of freedom and of value, of communication. Contrary to utilitarian value (normally known as material value), artistic value is the progressive value because, by a process of provocation, it is the valorization of humanity itself. Since Marx, economic politics has shown its impotence and its cowardice. A hyperpolitics will need to strive for the direct realization of humanity.† Walter Benjamins Authentic Opposition: Crisis of Reproduction Walter Benjamin is probably Adornos most established opponent, particularly since The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, a work that concentrated upon defining the aura of traditional art preceding 1900, and assessed the decay of this aura under the impact of new media and cultural technologies. Benjamin argues that art has lost its authenticity because of mechanical mass reproduction in our capitalist-orientated culture industry. He is concerned about shifting attitudes to art, which came about as a consequence of the introduction of mechanical means of reproduction. Formerly unique objects, located in a particular space, lost their singularity as they became accessible to many people in diverse places. Lost too was the aura that was attached to a work of Art which was now open to many different readings and interpretations Unlike his Frankfurt School colleagues, however, and especially unlike Adorno, Benjamin argues, this loss of authenticity is actually a positive thing, because it democratizes and politicizes art. Benjamins claim that arts loss of authenticity might actually help free people, not enslave them in a capitalist culture industry starkly opposes Adornos ideas. In addition, each stage of reproduction of an original work of art also contributes to its loss of aura. According to Benjamin, then: culture has been transformed into an industry; thus art has become commodified; contemporary culture is the machinery by which oppressive ideologies are reproduced and disseminated; new media technologies such as phonographs, film and photography, serve to destroy arts aura and effectively demystify the process of creating art, making available radical new access and roles for art in mass culture; the spectator has become a collaborator and participant, who joins the author in determining the meaning of the production of the work of art. Art is successful only when it enables the critical contemplation of a viewer. Benjamin happily equates authenticity with authority- the authority of oppressive institutions such as the church or the state- and history. As Benjamin explains, the work of arts authenticity is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced Until the 20th century, artworks retained their aura, their â€Å"authenticity† precisely because of their inability to be mass-reproduced, whether religious artifacts or one-off paintings commissioned by individual wealthy patrons. This conception clearly presents aura and authenticity as profoundly undemocratic, as the means of artistic production remain in the control of the rich and powerful, then able use such art to maintain control over the masses. The introduction of mechanical means of reproduction of art, particularly photography and film, caused the very foundations of this setup to be radically altered. For the first time it was possible for anyone to acquire the means to take photographs of a work of art, or at purchase an image of the work. However hard cultural elites in the late 19th century had tried to protect the aura of art works, the social advance of the masses and the invention of media such as film, which depends upon distribution to the masses, had led to the inevitable decay of the aura in the 20th century. Benjamin marks the distinction between manual and machine reproduction of art, The whole sphere of authenticity is outside technical, and, of course, not only technical reproducibility, he states, Confronted with its manual reproduction, which was usually branded as a forgery, the original preserved all its authority; not so vis a vis technical reproduction Benjamin states two reasons this occurs. Firstly, machine reproduction is more independent of the original than manual reproduction; secondly, technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself. So mass-produced copies are able to engage with the wider world in a manner not possible for the original or one-off copies. Benjamin summarises his ideas concerning reproduction by asserting the technique detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. Many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence.† So to allow the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, is to reactivate the object reproduced, â€Å"It is these processes that lead to the tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind In Benjamins conception, then, state and religious authorities have steadily lost the ability to control general access to such works of art, particularly since the 20th century began. This is most apparent in relation to the cinema, which destroyed the traces of aura with which art had been traditionally imbued; Benjamin cites arts historical value as a fundamental part of magical and religious rituals. In the process, capitalism strips art of its the idealistic, theological halo- to some extent a happy consequence and restorative, as it returns the art object to its non-utilitarian presence, its everyday reality. For Benjamin, an artworks â€Å"aura† refers to its uniqueness and the phenomena of distance, however close [an object] may be. He uses gives the example of distant mountains and a trees bough over head, both contain aura because they are images have not been effectively reproduced mechanically . Beyond the concepts of aura and authenticity, Benjamins concepts of reproduction and reversibility represent the core of his concerns about way in which arts role in society has been fundamentally altered in the 20th century. Benjamin proposes that the artworks aura of authenticity has withered away because of its reproduceability, and the process of reproduction brings art into closer proximity with a mass audience. However, paradoxically, as the authenticity erodes, the works essence becomes forefronted in the process, as it starts to become designed for reproducibility. As Benjamin describes it, â€Å"for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. . . . From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for an authentic print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics†. Benjamins commentaries on the effects of reproduction inspired other writers, such as Lechte, â€Å"it is the process of reproduction as such which is revolutionary: the fact, for instance, that the photographic negative enables a veritable multiplication of originals. With the photograph, therefore, the spectre of the simulacrum emerges, although Benjamin never names it as such. The photograph as simulacrum by-passes the simple difference between original and copy† Barbara Krugers Situationism and the Irresistible Collage of Society Barbara Kruger addresses the negative aspects of capitalist society as an artist, writer, curator, lecturer and graphic designer. Her art is displayed both inside and outside museums and in a range of different forms. Occasionally her prints are framed and hung on the walls of museums and galleries in the traditional fashion, but Kruger is endlessly inventive, and often writes text to be printed or projected directly on the walls or floors of a museum. In Picturing Greatness, a photography exhibition curated by Kruger in 1987 for The Museum of Modern Art in New York, text was printed in large black type across a central partition. Kruger selected photographs for this exhibit from the museums collection, and according to the words on the partition, the photographs were mostly of mostly famous artists† who happened to be predominantly white and male. The text on the partition claimed the works can show us how vocation is ambushed by clichà © and snapped into stereotype by the camera, and how photography freezes moments, creates prominence and makes history. Krugers work continually questions the definition of art, artists and the ways in which â€Å"great art† should be exhibited. In this work, Kruger challenges the overwhelming dominance of male artists and draws attention to the females apparent invisibility in western art history. Just like the Situationists under Guy Debord, she has altered the meaning of art by rec ontextualising it. Crucially, the visitor to Krugers exhibition does not need to be familiar with the original photographs before seeing the show- even the uneducated viewer could read Krugers text, look at the original images and come to their own conclusions about the meaning. Thus the work achieves a kind of unique political democracy. Kruger has a background as a graphic designer, and as such creates effective bold images which are in many ways visually indistinguishable from advertisements, but rather than trying to sell a product, appeal directly to our social conscience. The subject of her text is always I, me, we, or you, as though Kruger engages in conversation with the viewer. Her messages probe the assumptions of the capitalist status quo: You are seduced by the sex appeal of the inorganic, When I hear the word culture, I take out my checkbook and We have received orders not to move. Similarly, Constant, of the COBRA group, proposed a city as a kind of physical expression of his utopia of â€Å"free play† which, in parts, bears striking resemblance to representations of the Internet, in books such as Mapping Cyberspace (with wild lines pouring out of the metropolis perhaps representing bandwidth and site traffic). Made with perspex and bike parts, Constants models and his diagrams for New Babylon demonstrate his yearning for future as something mobile, organic, animated, and self-celebratory. For Constant the city was a sort of perpetual festival of leisure. With its intricately connected wires suspending clear circular layers, ramps and walkways, Constants New Babylon recalls some kind of tensile organism. As Constant describes it, â€Å"The unfunctional character of this playground-like construction makes any logical division of the inner spaces senseless. We should rather think of a quite chaotic arrangement of small and bigger spaces that are constantly assembled and dissembles by means of standardized mobile construction elements like walls, floors and staircases. Thus the social space can be adapted to the ever-changing needs of an every changing population as it passes through the sector system.† Analogues with the Internet are irresistable. Equally, he could have been referring in a general way to those unique social structures which have grown from the anti-globalisation movement – structures which, although provisional, pragmatic and short term, are nevertheless ideologically committed to social change and serve as emblems of the ongoing struggle against capitalism, a battle fuelled entirely from reserves of creativity. Constants is city as collage, similar to that celebrated by the less politically motivated group, Archigram, in the UK (many of whose members now design massive architectural features for megaband stadium concerts). In this time of desperate connectivity and complicated layering of urban cultures, with invisible webs of communication engulfing us, the need to understand the city as a place beyond work and production seems more pressing than ever. The Situationist reaction to capitalism is also excellently expressed through anti capitalist collage: for example that of the General Lighting and Power group, whose slick mock-advertising images of soft focus female forms in leotards and computer graphics of office interiors and car accidents, wryly annotated with entertaining aphorisms such as: Aerobics is necessary: progress implies it (I see you baby, shaking that ass) and God is in the retailing Comparisons to Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger are obvious. Charles Rice, too, has observed the oversized billboard signs now proliferating in major cities, arguing convincingly that they serve to perpetuate the distance between the real and the impossible,these spatial fantasies effectively deliver identification with the distant and the unattainable† Many writers have noted the similarities between the Situationists idea of the derive (that is, the navigating of a city via means and routes other than those originally intended) and the experience of â€Å"surfing† the internet. Colin Fournier, architect and educator makes some potent observations on this area. It would seem that many of the characteristics of the internet reflect the S.I.s utopic city. The things considered prerequisite for their utopia: an ephemeral, negotiable type of city, where uses were determined by the population, surfing the web is like the idea of drifting or â€Å"deriving†, flaneur-like, through a city. The Situationist city and the web are uniquely flexible, anarchically dynamic: spacial relations secondary on any given route. The internet always seems to somehow recall the old Surrealist idea of using a map of one city to find ones way around another. Art as Capitalism: the Medias Re-appropriation of Images Increasingly, the media is becoming governed by imagery, and the average consumer is overwhelmed by visual information on a daily basis. Through sheer competition, the commercial sphere has been forced to use stranger, scarier, more extreme imagery to earn the attention of bewildered customers. Magazines such as Vogue have lured artists to their pages, where they are seen as innovative, visionary powers for re-inventing a complacent visual vocabulary. Thus, the traditional hierarchy of photography, in which the commercial and conceptual worlds were segregated, has been broken down into a fluid, integrated world- mutual respect has ensured that crossing the boundary either way no longer carries the taint or disrespect it once did. A new generation of artists have grown up with the rather cynical and postmodern idea that all things are commercially viable. Contemporary art school graduates are less likely to see their ventures into the commercial realm as contamination, and more as a necessary aspect of their endeavor. Commerce is incorporated into art at every level, from the means to the ends to the theme. That the common thread of art and fashion- the human body- has become such a commodity, seems like an obvious extension of this. Fashion spreads frequently borrow art photographers for their pages and mimic, in the case of Diesel and others, with considerable irony- the current art world trend towards narrative ambiguity and deliberately theatrical tableaux that recall â€Å"theoretical† artists like Jeff Wall and Cindy Sherman. Russel Wong is one such new generation artist, his work strongly informed by todays cultural fascination with celebrity. Wong has become famous through striking portraits of personalities from sports to music and movies, famous for capturing moments of vulnerability, warmth and humor. A number of Wongs photos have been used on the covers of international magazines. My photos are never confrontati

The Tragedy of Ambition in Shakespeares Macbeth Essay -- GCSE English

The Tragedy of Ambition in Macbeth      Ã‚   Shakespeare's tragic play, Macbeth, shares common themes with many other stories and actual events. Many scandals, both historic and current, can be linked to greed, ambition, and abuse of power.   Typically, the key figures are motivated by, and are inevitably destroyed by, ambition.   This is also the case in Macbeth, where ambition leads to the downfall of the once great character, Macbeth.    William Shakespeare's tragedy, Macbeth, is a play about a man's ambition to become king.   Since the first part of the witches' prophecy, "All hail Macbeth! Thane of Glamis"(I.i.52-53)! was already a fact, and the second part was fulfilled almost as soon as the witches pronounced it, "All hail Macbeth! Thane of Cawdor"(I.i.54-55), Macbeth begins to think the part, "All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be King, / hereafter"(I.i.56-57)! might also come true because, "supernatural soliciting cannot be ill, cannot be good" (I.i.151-152).   Encouraged by his wife, Lady Macbeth, Macbeth murders King Duncan while he is a guest in Macbeth's castle.   As a result, Macbeth becomes king of Scotland.      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   According to his critical essay on Macbeth, "Shakespeare and the Hazards of Ambition," Robert N. Watson comments asserts that ambition becomes the enemy of all life, especially that of the ambitious man himself, in this play (Watson 31).   Shakespeare puts on displays a man's lifelong aspiration that seems to be fulfilled, but at the cost of his mental and emotional well-being.   Macbeth's desire to gain wealth and status completely overpowers him, reducing him to something less than human.   Macbeth becomes ever more ambitious as his wife goads him and the witches tease him with more prophecie... ...them to walk away with a win.   Sometimes this is found out and the athletes are stripped of their honors; other times, the drugs are found in the athlete's corpse.   In either case, as with Macbeth, blind ambition can lead to a downfall, or even to death.    Works Cited and Consulted: Dominic, C. Catherine. Shakespeare's Characters for Students. Detroit - New York - Toronto - London: Gale Research, 1997. Garber, Marjorie. "Macbeth: The Male Medusa." Shakespeare's Late Tragedies, ed. Susan L. Wofford. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1996, 74-103. Scott, W. Mark, ed. Shakespeare for Students. Detroit - Washington, D.C.: Gale research, 1992. Staunton, Howard, ed. The Globe Illustrated Shakespeare. New York: Gramercy Books, 1979. Watson, Robert N. Shakespeare and the Hazards of Ambition. Cambidge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984

16th century Renaissance

Century Renaissance Art The 16th Century renaissance started in the sass's and ended in the sass's. The art of the 16th Century Renaissance was both spiritual and worldly. The 16th Century Renaissance is when two very important art movements took place, High Renaissance and Mannerism. Everyone was starting to take an interest in the classical learning and values of ancient Greece and Rome. (The History Channel Website) They were many artist geniuses who emerged out of this art era.There were also many, grand art pieces that emerged out of this art era. At the beginning of the 16th century the High Renaissance had started. This was also the time when Rome replaced Florence as an art epicenter. The High Renaissance is also when artist become aware of lines and depth in their artwork. This led to the discovery and the use of the one point perspective. The High Renaissance artists became famous for putting windows of what is behind the horizon in the background of their artworks. The Hig h Renaissance represented artists who wanted to do art their own way.The high Renaissance started in 1480 and continued on to about 1527. The high Renaissance as in Milan, Florence, Rome, and in northern and central Italy. (Shelley Essay) This was the time to be an artist because everyone who was wealthy wanted art. Their many artist of this time frame, but the most famous artists are Michelangelo Bonaparte, Raphael Sansei and Leonardo ad Vinci. (Art Cyclopedia) After the High Renaissance ended the Mannerism movement came about. It came about in the sass's and ended around the sass's. Mannerism was known for its formulaic, theatrical and overly stylized work.Mannerism art pieces are usually pieces of human forms in unrealistic settings. Mannerism is also known for its much limitation. This is also the time that women start being used as muses for artists. (Art Cyclopedia) It developed in Florence and Rome and then spread to northern and central Europe. Paintings contained artificial color and unrealistic spatial proportions. Figures were often elongated and exaggerated, the poses were creative and complex poses. Works of the movement are often unsettling and strange because of the Reformation, the plague, and the sack of Rome. The History Channel Website) There were a lot of important artist who emerged from this period, but the most famous artist would be Leonardo Ad Vinci. Leonardo De Vinci was born in 1452, in Florence and died in 1519 in France. He was an artist and inventor. He is known as the â€Å"Renaissance Man† because he was an inventor, scientist, sculptor, and a great artist. Ad Vinci had many famous works. One of his most famous works is the â€Å"Last Supper† (1495-98). The last supper is a painting of the last meal Jesus shared with his apostles. It also shows Jesus isolated, four groups of threes and Judas in the shadows clutching money. The History Channel Website) Another famous piece by Ad Vinci as the â€Å"Mona Lisa†( 1 503-05), which is a painting of a woman. This painting would be an example of Mannerism art. Ad Vinci was also famous for the â€Å"The Virgin of the Rocks† (1485). Some other great artists were Michelangelo Bonaparte (1475-1564), and Raphael Sansei(1483-1 520). Michelangelo was famous for painting the Sistine Chapel ((1508-12) and sculpting the â€Å"David in his native Florence† (1501-04). Raphael Sansei was famous for the â€Å"The School of Athens† (1508-11). The â€Å"School of Athens† shows philosophers such as Pluto coming together.Another great artist of 16th Century was Titan â€Å"Meeting of Bacchus and Ordained† (1 522), he was famous for using rich luminous colors. (The History Channel Website) One of the most important art pieces of the 16th Century Renaissance was the â€Å"Sistine Chapel† (1508-04) architecture. The Sistine Chapel took a period of four years to paint. It was painted by Michelangelo Bonaparte. The Sistine Cha pel is a painting of a few scenes of Genesis, from the bible. One of the scenes was the Creation of Adam. (The History Channel Website) Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for the Pope Sixths ‘V.Also, along with ceilings of the Sistine Chapel, the side walls are festooned with frescoes of Moses and Christ and portraits of popes. (The New World Encyclopedia) Another important art piece or architecture of the 16th Century Renaissance was the SST. Peter Cathedral in Rome. The old SST. Peter Cathedral was constructed in honor of the apostle SST. Peter, the first bishop and first Pope. The original was constructed by Constantine. The SST. Peter Cathedral in Rome was to be renovated, ordered by Pope Julius II. During its renovation it was directed more towards a Latin style but, then

Claude Debussy

Claude Debussy: The Father of Impressionism Claude Debussy was among one of the most popular twentieth century composers of his time. He is known for his famous â€Å"Clair De Lune† and â€Å"La Mer†. This impacted the 20th century music genre with his difficult impressionist technique. He was among the few to be influenced by symbolist poets and impressionist painters, which resulted in true originality. He was the founder of Musical Impressionism, and impacted numerous composers such as Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Bela Bartok, Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Pierre’ Boulez. On August 22nd 1862, Claude-Anchille Debussy was born.He was born in Saint-Germain-en Laye, France. His father owned a shop where he sold china and his mother was a seamstress. He began to take piano lessons when they moved to Paris at age seven with an older Italian violinist named Certutti. His aunt kindly paid for them. His talent started to become noticeable, that in 1872 he entered the Pa ris Conservatoire and studied there for eleven years. While he was there he studied Composition, Music theory and history, Harmony, piano as well as organ and solfege. He started to favor dissonance and intervals that were not favored during this time.He was a brilliant pianist and a exceptional sight reader. Starting in the summer of 1880, he accompanied Pytor IllyichTchaikovsky where they traveled throughout Europe. He became the winner of the Prix de Rome in 1884 with his composition L’enfant prodigue. He then received a scholarship to Academie des Beaux-Arts which they provided a four year residence at the Villa Medici at the French Academy in Rome to further his studies into 1887. He composed four pieces that year that were sent to the academy. He then became interested with the Wagnerian Opera, which had a lasting impact on his work.He later died in 1918 of cancer. â€Å"I am trying to do ‘something different' in a way reality, what the imbeciles call ‘impr essionism' is a term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by art critics. â€Å"(Debussy) Debussy was the father of impressionism. Impressionism was an early twentieth style of musical composition, which involved flourishing harmonies, clever rhythms and unusual wavering tones. It originated in France where Debussy was born and lived. It was about an atmosphere about music more than the emotion that is expected from music or a story like program music.It was all about shaping new sound effects. These effects included long atypical chords, fast moving sounds when it came to piano dynamics, bitonality, and developing interesting timbres of an instrument specific articulation. Impressionism was mainly focused on Dynamics and Instrumentation. It was created to draw impressions not to necessarily to draw a clear picture. It was designed to create a mood or an atmosphere. The use of Harmony was a big part of Impressionism. An example of Debussy’s work would be â€Å" L’isle Joyeuse† which was influenced by the painting by Jean Watteau.It has no harmonic purpose and sometimes the melody is everywhere, which means there is no steady beat. The piece, in a way does what it wants without following any rules. This was a major part of Impressionism. An example of Claude Debussy’s work that shows the style of Impressionism is â€Å"La Clair De Lune†. It was composed in 1888 and is the third movement of the â€Å"Suite Bergamasque†. â€Å"The choice of compound triple meter for this movement shows the contrast to the dance movements and helps allow Debussy freedom to articulate the music differently.In addition, Clair de Lune is compositionally, the most adventurous piece of the suite. The positioning within the suite is important; it is the suite’s third movement, and is the lyrical climax of the suite. The use of structure and proportion within the movement is significant; Most important of all, they show ways in which the forms are used to project the music’s dramatic and expressive qualities with maximum precision†(Howat 1). It’s original name was â€Å"Promenade Sentimentale†. It was not published until 1905. It was inspired by Paul Verlaine's poems and was influenced by Verlaine's earliest collections.The name means moon-shine or moon light and is the name of one of Verlain's poems. Another example of Debussy’s work of Impressionism is â€Å"La Mer†. Debussy composed it in 1903 and it was completed in 1905. He then premiered it that same year with The Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Debussy’s influence came from the painter J. M. W. Turner. They both had intertwining interests with the sea. With the rich melodic lines, to the rhythmic regularity, and the use of harmonic progressions helped create the sound of the waves Debussy was looking for. â€Å"We must agree,† Debussy writes, â€Å"that the beauty of a work of art will lways rem ain a mystery, in other words, we can never be absolutely sure how it is made†(Trezise 102). In my opinion, these were his best works because of how irregular his melodies are and how he harmonizes in each piece. His use of harmonies creates an atonal sound so that the chords do not sound nice or match together. He creates this â€Å"dream like† sequence that takes you off into another world. It is almost like you are sleeping, and dreaming at the same time in both pieces. In â€Å"La Clair De Lune†, it is more like a dream sequence that gives you the harmonies that are irregular.It also has no specific melody so it could possibly have no end. Both pieces are great examples of Impressionism and Debussy really knew how to make it happen. Claude Debussy was the father of Impressionism and truly changed the way someone can analyze music. He created a new movement in music that inspired other twentieth century composers to follow in his footsteps. With his pentatonic scale, and his use of atonality, Debussy shaped what was the era of new music. Without his interest in creating new things, today we would not have the fluence from him on impressionism.

Copernicus and His Gifts to Science essays

Copernicus and His Gifts to Science essays On February 19, 1473 Nicolaus Copernicus was born, destined to be one of the most influential men in scientific history. Throughout his years, Copernicus has contributed many thoughts to science. The Autograph De Revolutionibus, preserved in the Jagiellonian Library, is a result of work of the great scholar. In May 1514 Copernicus had written and tastefully distributed in text his Commentariolus, the first outline of those wiles eventually substantiated in De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, 1543). This piece confronted the geocentric cosmology that had been uncompromisingly accepted since of Aristotle. Copernicus proposed that the Earth along with other planets revolved around a central Sun could account in a simpler way for the same observed phenomena of the daily rotation of the heavens, the annual movement of the Sun through the ecliptic, and the sporadic motions of the planets. The new theory that Copernicus advocated in De Revolutionibus exhibits an irregular fusion of both drastic and traditional basics. But, Copernicus still held to the ancient Aristotelian principles of solid celestial spheres and perfect circular motion of heavenly bodies, and the entire Aristotelian physics of motion. He clung to the Ptolemaic version of planetary motion by means of complex mixtures of circles called epicycles. These aspects of the Copernican expositions do not alleviate the innovation or the impact of the final theory, or the author's unyielding certainty that his system was an accurate depiction of physical reality. The articulation of the heliocentric theory by Copernicus launched the foundation of the scientific revolution. The publication of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium was a break through contribution in history. By referring to the Earth, a daily motion around its own axis and a yearly motion around the stationary Sun, Copernicus developed a thought that had vast insinuation...

Using different teaching strategies to improve the performance of Assignment

Using different teaching strategies to improve the performance of nursing students with different learning styles - Assignment Example Over the past years, the utility derived from matching the learning styles to the appropriate teaching methods has widely been discussed (Bostrà ¶m, 2013). It is believed that in a case where the students are presented with difficult information and new courses, a great change is observed when the individual’s learning style is correctly matched to the teaching strategy (Aina-Popoola, 2014; Luo et.al, 2014). This literature review seeks to establish the different student’s learning styles, the specific challenges facing the facilitators in nursing education as well as the creative teaching strategies that can be integrated in nursing teaching to improve on the learning efficiency. It is hypothesized that the different learning styles and teaching strategies have an effect on nursing student learning. The following literature review from the last five years therefore seeks to demonstrate and support this hypothesis. In a study by Amina and Houaida (2012) that sought to identify the learning styles preferred by the nursing students in Nursing and Technical Institute of Alexandria, 288 nursing students were involved in the study. 169 of the students were from the faculty of nursing while 119 were from the technical nursing institution. Both the comparative and the descriptive research study designs were used in the study. From this study, it was evident that the most prominent learning style preferred by the nursing students in Egypt was kinesthetic style. Further, statistical analysis of the data collected in the study revealed a significant difference between age and the score of the particular nursing courses. It is from these findings that the researcher concluded that there exist a number of learning styles preferred by the nursing students of which can be adequately exploited by the nursing educators in coming up with appropriate techniques and

Campaign finance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Campaign finance - Essay Example Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney, forty-sixth vice president of the United States, has over three decades of experience in political service. Formerly a US representative and secretary of state, many saw Cheney as the ideal running mate for the relatively inexperienced George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election.Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska on January 30, 1941, the son of Marjorie and Richard H. Cheney. He was raised in Casper, Wyoming, where the elder Cheney worked as a soil conservationist for the Department of Agriculture.After graduating from a local high school, Cheney earned a scholarship and traveled east to attend Yale University in Connecticut. He dropped out of school during his second year, due to his poor academic performance, and returned to Wyoming. Cheney went to work for a brief time before returning to school, first at Casper College and later at the University of Wyoming. In 1964, he married his high-school sweetheart, Lynn Anne Vincent. Cheney finally gradu ated two years later with a master's degree in political science.After graduation, Cheney received an educational deferment to avoid military service during the Vietnam War. He enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of Wisconsin, and launched his long political career in 1968, when he went to Washington DC to work for Representative William Steiger (R-Wisconsin) as a congressional fellow. Cheney was soon recruited by Representative Donald Rumsfeld, the head of President Richard Nixon's Office of Economic Opportunity, to work as his assistant. (Carney 82) Throughout the early 1970s, Cheney held a number of positions alongside Rumsfeld, who had become a mentor to the young political hopeful. He served as deputy White House counsel, assistant director of the Cost of Living Council, and deputy chief of staff for President Gerald Ford. To supplement his income, Cheney also served as vice president of investment group Bradley, Woods, & Co. Cheney's biggest break came in 1975, when he replaced his mentor as White House chief of staff after Rumsfeld was appointed as secretary of defense. At the age of 34, Cheney was among the youngest men ever to hold this position, which he held until 1976. During this time, he earned a reputation as a prominent player in the Republican Party. Washington Insider Beginning in 1979, Cheney served six terms in the House of Representatives, as a representative from Wyoming. Before his election to the House, he suffered a heart attack, the first of three coronary episodes he would endure before the age of 50. As chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee for most of his tenure, Cheney was known as a conservative, and voted strictly along party lines. When Republican Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, Cheney and his right-wing House colleagues were steadfast supporters of the new White House agenda. In addition to his vocal support for the "Star Wars" missile defense system, Cheney was in favor of military backing for the "Contra" rebels in Nicaragua, as well as for rebel fighters in Afghanistan and Angola. In the late 1980s, when he sat on the House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Deals with Iran during the Iran-Contra scandal, Cheney defended the controversial actions of the Reagan administration and his fellow Republicans. On the domestic issue front, Cheney was opposed to gun control and abortion and in favor of prayer in public schools. He voted against the Equal Rights Amendment and re-funding the Clean Water Act. As a result of his loyalty to the party, Cheney became minority whip, the second-most influential position in the House, in 1988. His wife, meanwhile, served as the chairperson of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986-1993. Under Reagan's successor, George Bush, Cheney served as secretary of defense, and played a key role in directing the nation's military during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The popular success of the